Do We Doodle Because We Speak?

A toddler with a crayon in hand is understood to be a menace to white walls. But instead of scolding the kid, we could instead examine the scribbles for messages. Is doodling, often born of boredom, actually something that we are driven to do by instinct? Some researchers are now discussing the possibility that doodling may be a kind of language. In an article by David Robson for BBC Future, Neil Cohn, who studies graphic novels scientifically at the University of California, San Diego, points out that some symbols are repeated across a medium — for instance, stars spin around the head of dizzy characters in comics — and serve as a kind of vocabulary. A toddler’s desire to scribble on anything and everything may actually be evidence of a fundamental need for a doodle language.